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OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

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Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#131
post #26

I've been looking to replace Google Maps with OSM on my smartphone. OSM itself is great, but I've been having a harder time finding a good app to use it with. Is anyone familiar with a good option? I mostly use a maps app for location searches and real-time GPS navigation, but offline maps and location sharing are nice-to-have features. I've been using OsmAnd and it's okay. The interface is pretty good. It supports o…

Magic Earth offers a more polished user experience for driving. Compared to OsmAnd, you gain address geolocation from a third-party source (not sure which), traffic alerts, and a dashcam feature, but you lose map editing functionality and many of the non-driving features in OsmAnd. Magic Earth is closed source, although it is free of charge and has no ads. It doesn't hurt to have both Magic Earth and OsmAnd installed…

I downloaded magic earth and it works surprisingly well. I am concerned about the fact that it is free, though. I wonder what's their business plan.

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#132

I have been considering looking at OSM as "yet another data source" for my maps, but overall I run into the highly abstract issue of comparison: how do I know that two segments (one from say OSM, one from perhaps the county) reference the same stretch of street for comparison? Even the slightest nudge of a single coordinate point on the line would mean that they were not geometrically identical, so I would not know t…

One of the under-appreciated advantages OSM has here is that they have a fairly well enforced convention of using fully expanded abbreviations in addresses and street names. It's _much_ easier for automated comparison to replace `street` with `st` than it is to guess which one of many possible expansions to replace `st` with (is it saint? street? sankt? strasse?). This isn't foolproof but much of the "authoritative"…

The official USPS abbreviation list has some pretty crazy ones:

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28apc_002.htm

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#134
post #77

One thing that someone might consider is working with Data Portability laws to allow for export of user contributed data to corporate map platforms. I'd like to add my Google Maps contributions to OSM I'm a Level 7 local guide there and was an active user of MapMaker back in the day..

Which sort of contributions would you like to copy from Google Maps to OSM?

If you personally surveyed these places you can go to OpenStreetMap.org, sign in and then you can add your changes - OSM may already have the info so a straight import wouldn't be possible.

Make sure not to copy any of Google's details to OSM that you didn't personally survey as that would violate copyright.

Please reach out to me if you'd like a hand with getting started mapping on OSM :)

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#135

I have been considering looking at OSM as "yet another data source" for my maps, but overall I run into the highly abstract issue of comparison: how do I know that two segments (one from say OSM, one from perhaps the county) reference the same stretch of street for comparison? Even the slightest nudge of a single coordinate point on the line would mean that they were not geometrically identical, so I would not know t…

https://sharedstreets.io/ may help!

> SharedStreets Referencing System is a global, non-proprietary system for describing streets. The Referencing System is the foundation of the SharedStreets toolkit and it is used to connect a wide range of street-linked data. The Referencing System connects street data from private companies and cities. Referenced data can then be transferred between different maps seamlessly.

I think it can align maps that have similar streets that may not align perfectly coordinate wise.

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strava even has their own fork of the OSM online editor iD[0], that uses the heatmap data to align (or "slide" [1]) paths to where people have been. I haven't used it in a while, it was pretty slow when I did and I don't know about licensing etc, but it looks like it still works. So if you want to add the trails you could try it out. [0] https://strava.github.io/iD [1] https://labs.strava.com/slide/

Slide unfortunately hasn't worked for years. Not long after Paul Mach, who created slide, left strava, there was that whole national security incident with the heat map. The heat map was changed to hide military bases, etc, but it broke slide and no one cared enough to fix it.

This is incredibly unfortunate because Slide is ideal for mapping trails in the woods. Lacking something like it I end up tracing them by hand, which is a pain. (I do a lot of trail mapping in Michigan.)

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#137
post #77

One thing that someone might consider is working with Data Portability laws to allow for export of user contributed data to corporate map platforms. I'd like to add my Google Maps contributions to OSM I'm a Level 7 local guide there and was an active user of MapMaker back in the day..

Google map reviews is the only thing keeping me from OSM based maps. I love to explore, take photos and review places. OsmAnd has some review functionality but it's very barebones unfortunately.

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#138
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's old map was OpenStreetMap plus other sources but its new ones are proprietary. But its new ones are only available in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland.

I believe the old map was mostly TomTom (TeleAtlas) with a little bit of other sources sprinkled in.

Yes, more TomTom that openstreetmap, that was clearly show by the dataquality. Much less walk and vike information. If you don't drive a car all my sampling say OSM is way better.

Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities

#140

OSM is lovely, except for the UI. It is way over complicated.

The thing is it doesn’t really have a UI; it’s just a database that people can do what they want with.

The interfaces that you see—even on the OSM website—are a myriad of separate projects.

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